


i can't come down (but i know i'll be alright)

by kiriya



Category: Power Rangers (2017)
Genre: F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-05
Updated: 2019-02-05
Packaged: 2019-10-22 15:22:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17665070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiriya/pseuds/kiriya
Summary: Kimberly smiles, part amused (because things have changed so quickly, because she spins on an entirely new axis), part because Zack’s grin is infectious.(thinking about how love unfolds in the past, and not worrying how it unfolds in the future.)





	i can't come down (but i know i'll be alright)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hearden](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hearden/gifts).



Kimberly gets a yearbook, like a normal student.

Her parents keep one from each school year in their living room, with their spines facing the rest of room. Above the couch, there’s rows of portraits from each school year of her getting incrementally older. Dorky, Kimberly called it. Embarrassing, because of how her old friends stifled their giggles, but Zack called it cute and asked her parents — who, slowly but surely, had been getting better — enthusiastically about each one.

Maybe they’ve grown on her now.

“You didn’t tell me you wore glasses,” he says, and Kimberly smiles when he nudges her playfully and calls her a “ _Geek_.” At least he didn’t comment on the thin, ill-advised bangs she gave herself in eighth grade that were an inch too high. One would think that would steer her away from impulsive hair decisions, but if anything, it made it easier.

“You know everything about everyone, right?” Zack asks, when they’re in her bedroom, surveying the glossy page of yearbook portraits. He’s smiling, like always, making his eyes light up in a way that makes her chest swell (though some days, they seem vacant. Some days, he’s more tired). “Man, I can’t even recognize half the people here.”

Even the comment about her makes Kimberly smile, part amused (because things have changed so quickly, because she spins on an entirely new axis), part because Zack’s grin is infectious. She laughs, a quick inhale thorough her nose.

She leans down towards him with a smile. “All that stuff has been replaced, with like, fighting moves and stuff,”

Looking at his smile, Kimberly remembers him that second time she saw him, grinning, hair wet. She remembers the blue light filtered through the water moving, across his face. So much has happened so quickly between now and then, it feels like a lifetime away and no time at all.

“Yeah, you gave me a serious ass-whooping the other day.” He replies, giving at a performative hiss while stretching the shoulder she slammed into a rock during a spar the other day.

“Whoops.”

He flops back on the bed with a bored splutter. His black henley shirt rides up his stomach, and Kimberly finds herself staring. He must notice, because he smirks at her, making the color rise in her cheeks.

She deflects with a question, “Are you coming to graduation?”

“Nah,” He says with a dismissive wave. Zack repeated his sophomore year for having missed so many days (The first thing he did when got back was crack a scheme to get into Saturday Detention with the rest of them. ‘Fear of missing out,’ he said.) He was a year behind them now, along with their recent addition of Tommy. “Gonna miss me?”

“Surprise me after and you’ll see.”

Zack doesn’t answer, but he smiles. He places his cheek in his hand and gives her a wry look. “So, no plans to leave this tired old fish town?”

It was a weighted question, but he’s trying to make it seem like it isn’t. She shed her carefully-laid plans for college when she shed her old self. . Jason had asked her once if she wanted to go, and at the time, it felt her prayers being answered. But as the saying goes, ‘humans make plans and God laughs.’

Kimberly knows being a Power Ranger can’t last forever (she’s tried to picture it, her age forty, still kicking Putties and rolling her eyes at Zack’s jokes (but smiling despite herself), but right now, she’s more than happy where she is and the rest can be figured out later.

“It wasn’t all bad.”

An understatement, because the last two years have been something she never thought she’d get.

A fond smile curls her lip.

“Remember that time you took Billy to do some graffiti with you?”

“He’s a good artist!” Zack exclaims. Then, he deflates, but he mirrors her wistful smile. It was the first time either of them had done it, but what they made (something from Billy’s sketchbook, a vibrantly colored mural of the six of them in suit) was beautiful. Trini cried when she saw, and didn’t even try to hide it. “You were a _very_ good look out. Damn, you think the rangers would be upstanding citizens and what not?”

“Nobody’s perfect,” Of the six of them, that’s especially true. “It was better than that time we drove into the city to go to that super bougie club and saw some of my cheerleader ‘friends.’”

“Yeah, they didn’t even recognize me. What’d we get kicked out for again?”

“You knocked your elbow into a stage light.”

She’s not mad about it. The better part of the night was when they broke into a fifty story building, just to scream on the roof.

“What can I say? Super strength isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be,” Kimberly rolls her eyes at that, because she knows it isn’t true. She remembers all challenges he’s given her: how long can they pass notes without anyone noticing? Can they crack a boulder into pebbles with just one kick? Who get to the quarry the fastest? Can drive to the mountains, and see how high they can possibly get? The others always ignore it, but Kimberly can’t resist rising to it. Zack even wanted to invented a sport, just for the six of them to play together.“Billy was _so good_ about letting us take his mom’s car, especially after what happened last time… And the time after that.”

“Hey, we don’t talk about that.” She tries to sound serious, but it doesn’t come through at all with the smile tugging at her lips.

That’s how she always finds things go with Zack. Agreeing to a hair-brained scheme for the hell of it — is it her own impulsivity or the mischievous glint in his eye that gets her every time? — then finding she doesn’t quite know what it is she’s gotten herself into (but it doesn’t regret it, all the same).

They share calmer nights though, like tonight, like the nights where she gets to see him quiet while he cooks for his mom, the same nights when he cracks dumb jokes during chess like he isn’t a hundred moves ahead of her.

He leans over for the remote. Zack wants to show her one of his favorite movies, a campy 90s comedy that he used to watch with his mom because it had a Chinese dub.

“I’ve seen it, like, a million times, but I still laugh at every stupid gag.”

That doesn’t surprise her. Before the movie starts, he takes his fingers in hers, contemplating the class ring there. It’s ugly. She didn’t want one, but her parents did, and she’s learning how to pick her battles. They might not be perfect, but they’re here and they’re healthy, at least.

The ring has a pink stone. It was her favorite color, even before all the ranger stuff. The bulky setting has her graduation year and an engraving of a girl with poms poms. The catalog she ordered it from had no option that represented anything that actually meant something to her in high school. Nothing that stood for Saturday Detentions, or clandestine rendezvous at the quarry, or the smell of Zack’s cooking.

He smiles at her, showing all his dazzle and all his teeth. Then, his mouth is covering hers. There’s a gentle hand on her jaw, soft lips on hers, the familiar shape of a grin against her mouth. 

Her parents weren’t happy when she said she was taking a year off. _Don’t throw away your future for a boy_ , they said, because Zack was showing up at her door more and more routinely. But like every fight, it blew over (she compromised by agreeing to take classes somewhere local). It wasn’t Zack, she told them, because a) because they liked him otherwise and B) because it was true. But he was a part of the family that filled her in a way she never thought possible.

“Are you ready?” Zack asks her, before pressing play.

“Yeah.”

Kimberly doesn’t really know where she’s going, but if the past year — if Zack — has taught her anything, it’s to trust her feelings and let herself fall.


End file.
